Sam Spade

For the network-query tool designed to hunt down spammers, see Sam Spade (software). For the Without a Trace character, see Samantha Spade.

Sam Spade
First appearance	The Maltese Falcon
Created by	Dashiell Hammett
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Consulting detective
Nationality	American

Sam Spade is a fictional character who is the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon and the various films and adaptations based on it, as well as in three lesser known short stories by Hammett.

The novel, first published as a serial in the pulp magazine Black Mask, is the only one that Spade appears in, yet the character is widely cited as the crystallizing figure in the development of the hard-boiled private detective genre – Raymond Chandler's character Philip Marlowe, for instance, was strongly influenced by Hammett's Spade.

Spade was a departure from Hammett's nameless and less than glamorous detective, The Continental Op. Sam Spade combined several features of previous detectives, most notably his cold detachment, keen eye for detail, and unflinching determination to achieve his own justice. He is the man who has seen the wretched, the corrupt, the tawdry side of life but still retains his "tarnished idealism".

Portrayals

Sam Spade was a new character created specifically by Hammett for The Maltese Falcon; he had not appeared in any of Hammett's previous short stories. Hammett says about him:

Spade has no original. He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and in their cockier moments thought they approached. For your private detective does not — or did not ten years ago when he was my colleague — want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent by-stander or client.

For most people, the character is most closely associated with actor Humphrey Bogart, who played Spade in the third and most famous film version of The Maltese Falcon. Although Bogart's hair was not dyed blond as called for in the novel, and was considered too small and dark for the role (and was even slighted for not playing the character as enough of a lecher), his portrayal of Spade turned out to be the archetypal private detective. His characterization has influenced film noir ever since.

Spade was played by Ricardo Cortez in the first film version in 1931. Despite being a critical and commercial success, an attempt to re-release the film in 1936 was denied approval by the Production Code Office due to the film's "lewd" content. Since Warner Bros. could not re-release the film, a second version was made. In the 1936 comedy, Satan Met a Lady, the central character was renamed Ted Shane and was played by Warren William. The film was a notable flop.

On the radio, Sam Spade was played by Bogart in a 1943 Screen Guild Theater production and a 1946 Academy Award Theater production. He was also played by Edward G. Robinson in a 1943 Lux Radio Theatre production. A 1946-1951 radio show called The Adventures of Sam Spade (on ABC, CBS, and NBC) starred Howard Duff (and later Stephen Dunne|Steve Dunne) as "Sam Spade" and Lurene Tuttle as Spade's devoted secretary "Effie Perrine", and took a considerably more tongue-in-cheek approach to the character.

George Segal played Sam Spade, Jr., son of the original, in the 1975 film spoof, The Black Bird. The Black Bird was panned by both critics and audiences alike. Peter Falk delivered a critically more successful spoof the following year as "Sam Diamond" in Neil Simon's Murder by Death."

In 2009, with the approval of the estate of Dashiell Hammett, the veteran detective-story writer Joe Gores published Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett's THE MALTESE FALCON with Alfred A. Knopf, the original publisher of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.

Books

• The Maltese Falcon (1930)
  • Serialized in 5 parts, in the September 1929 to January 1930 issues of Black Mask
• "The Radio Adventures of Sam Spade" (2007) by Martin Grams, Jr., OTR Publishing, Churchville, Maryland. ISBN 978-0-9703310-7-6

Short stories

• "A Man Called Spade" (July, 1932, The American Magazine; also collected in A Man Called Spade and Other Stories)
• "Too Many Have Lived" (October, 1932, The American Magazine; also collected in A Man Called Spade and Other Stories)
• "They Can Only Hang You Once" (November 19, 1932, Colliers; also in A Man Called Spade and Other Stories)

Collection

• A Man Named Spade and Other Stories (1944) (contains three Sam Spade stories from The American Magazine and Colliers -- listed above)
• Nightmare Town (1999) (contains three Sam Spade stories from The American Magazine and Colliers -- listed above)

Films

• The Maltese Falcon (1931, Warner Bros.) (also known as Dangerous Female), starring Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade
• Satan Met a Lady (1936, Warner Bros.) (based on The Maltese Falcon, with the character names and the object of their search changed), starring Warren William as the Sam Spade character.
• The Maltese Falcon (1941, Warner Bros.), starring Humphrey Bogart
• The Life of Riley (1949), played by Howard Duff (as Voice of Sam Spade on Radio Show)
• The Black Bird (1975, Columbia), a comedy sequel to the 1941 film, starring George Segal as "Sammy" Spade, Jr.
• The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It (1977), played by Mike O'Malley; a Sherlock Holmes spoof where Spade is killed by the granddaughter of Professor Moriarty
• Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978, MGM), played by Lon Satton, Rosita Yarboy, Keith Hodiak and Pepsi Maycock as 'Sam Spade and the Private Eyes'
• Curse of the Jade Falcon (2008), short film starring David Lewis

Radio

• Screen Guild Theater: "The Maltese Falcon" (1943, CBS — 30-minute version of the story, starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre
• Lux Radio Theatre: "The Maltese Falcon" (1943, CBS) — a 60 minute version of the novel, starring Edward G. Robinson as Sam Spade and Laird Cregar as Casper Gutman
• Academy Award Theatre: "The Maltese Falcon" (1946, CBS) — 30-minute version of the story, starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and Sidney Greenstreet
• Suspense: "The House in Cypress Canyon" (December 5, 1946, CBS) — 30 minutes, starring Howard Duff
• Suspense: "The Kandy Tooth Caper" (January 10, 1948, CBS) — 60 minutes, starring Howard Duff
• Maxwell House Coffee Time (aka The Burns And Allen Show) — "Gracie Sends Sam Spade To Jail" (February 10, 1949 NBC) a 30-minute episode starring Howard Duff - both as himself and as Sam Spade.
• The Adventures of Sam Spade (1946, ABC) — 13 30-minute episodes, starring Howard Duff
• The Adventures of Sam Spade (1946–1949, CBS) — 157 30-minute episodes, starring Howard Duff
• The Adventures of Sam Spade (1949–1950, NBC) — 51 30-minute episodes, starring Howard Duff
• The Adventures of Sam Spade (1950–1951, NBC) — 24 30-minute episodes, starring Steve Dunne
• The Adventures of Babe Lincoln (circa 1950, CBS) — unaired, starring Howard Duff
• Charlie Wild, Private Eye (September 24, 1950, NBC) — premiere broadcast only, guest appearance Howard Duff
• BBC Radio 4: "The Maltese Falcon" (2001) — starring Tom Wilkinson, Jane Lapotaire, and Nickolas Grace
• The Maltese Falcon (2009) — Grammy-nominated audio play, starring Michael Madsen, Sandra Oh and Edward Herrmann, produced by The Hollywood Theater of the Ear and published by Blackstone Audio.

Comics/Manga

• The Maltese Falcon (1946, Feature Books #48, David McKay Publications) Artist: Rodlow Willard
• Sam Spade Wildroot Hair Tonic Ads (1950's)
  • Single page comic strips, appeared in newspapers, magazines, comic books. Tie-in with radio show The Adventures of Sam Spade, which Wildroot also sponsored. Artist: Lou Fine.
• Spade was highlighted in volume 21 of the Case Closed manga's edition of "Gosho Aoyama's Mystery Library", in the section (usually the last page) where the author introduces a different detective (or occasionally, a villain) from mystery literature, television, or other media.

External links

• Thrilling Detective Website